Google Small Business

When it comes to online business services, did you know that according to our friends at econsultancy.com, social network interaction and blog reading represent the fourth most popular online activities, beating out personal e-mail. As much as 10% of all the time spent on the Internet is spent on social media sites! As a measure of the importance of social media sites, search engine giant Bing revealed that second in its list of the top 10 world trends for the year was Twitter. This just goes to show the sheer level of interest in social media and in this case, the new boy on the block Twitter. Just as it is important for you to “be” on Facebook, you must maintain a proactive presence on Twitter as well.

Twitter has been widely referred to as a micro-blog and has really found its own niche. As you know, this medium allows you to send short status messages, and it has really caught on within the business world. Companies can keep in touch with clients, publicly handle customer relationship issues and generally reveal a level of visibility that is quite unique.

You need to think quite creatively about your Twitter presence and understand that innovation will help. For example, create a dedicated background design and never accept the generic offerings and profile settings offered by Twitter, while also configuring your links correctly and deciding how you are going to build a followers list. There are a number of tools available to you, many based on straightforward keyword research, enabling you to accurately target people who have said they are interested in your niche. Once again, as with Facebook, management and maintenance of your Twitter account will take a concerted effort. You should allocate time, ideally again on a daily basis, to create meaningful messages, a.k.a. tweets, and interact with others through direct messages. Note that the vast majority of members, corporate or otherwise, do not meaningfully interact through this medium and are certainly missing out. By making a big effort to set it all up and then committing to management, you can really take advantage of this fabulous new medium.

The world of Internet marketing is obviously dynamic, but it has changed almost beyond recognition in the last few years. Since the effective arrival of “web 2.0” and the social media revolution, marketing online has become much more of a subtle and thoughtful approach. Great emphasis is now placed on establishing your operation and your name, so that you are viewed as expert and authoritative. When you interact through social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter, do be careful as you go about it – and rarely, if ever, approach prospects with a hard sell. In addition to your main sales hub, why not set up a blog to feed into it? You can certainly link them and you can even create a subdomain within your website development to actually host your blog, but you should maintain an element of separation.

You need to think about your very core operations. Education is critical as you expose your products or services to prospects. You certainly have no problem in convincing yourself how much of a deal your products represent, but remember that people in the real world know nothing about them, as yet. However, you need to convince others and this is where you must establish yourself and your organisation as experts. Create and maintain a well-designed, professionally presented blog. Generally, website development platforms such as WordPress are invaluable here, or you could choose to set up a content management system to start off with.

Michelle Dale is The Managing Director of Virtual Miss Friday, a highly-qualified Executive Virtual Assistant Service which helps businesses and individuals accomplish every detail of their professional aspirations. Want to discover more about these insightful online business building success strategies? Contact VMF Today!